It started wonderfully: he was contacted by a Hasbro product manager who was asking for his mailing address so she could send him some free samples of a rare-in-Australia Nerf gun to offer as a promotional giveaway on the blog. He gave it to her, and soon after got something in the mail from Hasbro: a legal nastygram.

Not the nastiest of nastygrams, sure—in fact he makes a point of saying how polite it was. Which is why he decided to comply with its request that he take down some photos of an unreleased Nerf gun from the blog, which Hasbro claimed were copyrighted and confidential. The letter also asked him to tell them where he got the images, and he responded explaining that he's not sure where they came from because he gets photos sent to him constantly—and also reminded them that journalists and their sources have certain protections under Australian law. They emailed back and said they wanted to talk more on the phone; he responded saying the matter seemed to be resolved and he couldn't see any point in talking further. In the mean time, he got another email from another product manager confirming that they were sending him free samples! He was understandably confused, and then things got genuinely nasty:

Flash forward to today- I forgot all about this for a bit and didn't reply to the latest letter from the lawyers. Then I get stories from neighbours that some strange woman and some burly, repo-looking type is hanging around my apartment block. How creepy is that?

Sadly they weren't here to give me free stuff. Turns out they're from Hasbro's lawyers!!! I told them the same stuff all over again and tried to explain that I got a bunch of stuff from ebay and taobao – of course they haven't heard of taobao and seem to want me to do their job for them.

Yup. They sent people to his house to investigate and intimidate him. All while at the same time trying to court him with free stuff from another arm of the organization. At first, naturally, he wondered if the offer of free samples was a ruse to track him down, but Hasbro's lawyers roundly denied that and as the story began to gain traction, Hasbro released a statement on the Nerf Facebook page:

We appreciate the opportunity to provide the following statement concerning Hasbro’s investigation into “leaked” IP information regarding its NERF brand products. As with anything, there are two sides to every story. While we cannot comment on the details of any ongoing investigation, Hasbro takes all circumstances of its stolen and leaked IP very seriously and will continue to investigate sources of unauthorized information and products as it relates to its brands. We would like to clarify one of the inaccuracies that has been reported. While a local Hasbro Australia marketing team did reach out to the Urban Taggers website to engage in promotional activity for which it required its address, it was completely unrelated to the confidential global investigation being conducted on Hasbro’s behalf by independent investigators looking into sources of leaked IP information. Hasbro greatly values and appreciates its fan communities and is very proud of its strong relationships with many bloggers and sites that cover our brands and products.

I'm inclined to believe them—but that doesn't make their behavior all that much less shameful. This is a problem a lot of big companies have: their legal departments and their marketing departments are completely disconnected, so one is out there encouraging activity that the other is trying to squash. It's why you get nonsense like Viacom suing YouTube over videos they uploaded themselves. This may have just been a coincidence with really horrible timing, but at the end of the day it's no way to treat a customer—much less a super-customer who promotes your products to others.

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"We would like to clarify one of the inaccuracies that has been reported. While a local Hasbro Australia marketing team did reach out to the Urban Taggers website to engage in promotional activity for which it required its address, it was completely unrelated to the confidential global investigation being conducted on Hasbro’s behalf by independent investigators looking into sources of leaked IP information."

They have not "clarified an inaccuracy", they have tried to deflect blame.

I work in a company that has a design/installation department and a service department. They are effectively operated as separate businesses and there isn't a lot of overlap between the divisions' activities, but we are constantly reminded of the fact that from the customer's perspective we are one company.

As far as this guy's concerned Hasbo contacted him for promotional purposes and Hasbo investigated him as a source of leaked IP information. They need to be up front and apologise for what Hasbo did rather than point the finger at another division.

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I agree Hasbro should apologize for how they made it look to him and others outside the company. Though, I do believe Hasbro is telling the truth when they said that the promotion deal asking for his address was completely unrelated to the investigation from the legal team.

As far as my experience with Hasbro, they were awfully polite in their cease and desist letter when a song for MLP was leaked early, and the Brony community for the most part honored Hasbro's wishes.

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A rouse is a ruse if you're enthused in a blouse, but a mouse in a ruse is a louse you can loose.

If you rouse out the mouse from your house in the mews then he'll spy your spouse who's your muse for the blues. Then the mouse as his dues will take your spouse on a cruise to Tolous while he spews vows of misuse, then the mouse is louse with nothing to loose. So why rouse a mouse who's done no abuse to your house in the mews, instead drink some booze!

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So it's not just me, then. A guy being intimidated by heavies over a picture of a toy. It's just insanity. What is wrong with these people? Do they not stop at any point to consider what they're doing? I'm stunned, quite frankly.

While I don't want to get into slamming you Marcus (it is way too easy), I have to say that your big long story doesn't amount to much more than:

"Hasbro is a big, big company".

Like it or not, in companies that large the right hand and the left hand are often not only far apart, but located on different bodies.

The whole story makes way more sense when you look at it that way. Buy you don't generally do that, because you seem to feel that very large multinational companies should have the same communication speed, accuracy, and cohesive action plan as a single brain. Just more proof that you don't appear to work in the real world, or perhaps just in an isolated corner of the copyright world making minor photoshop edits to people's used car ads.

Hasbro & it's representatives have acted extremely strange and unprofessionally (ethical concerns as well) and any Australian Judge would be very intrigued with the way the solicitors have responded and how hasbro has done certain things (A Facebook oficial page response? Really???)

Though the sneaky ways of extracting info, by asking for address, then phone number (hopefully he never gave it) and then sending 'investigators' around to sniff him out are normal though the way the 'investigators' confronted him at his residence is highly unethical and liable to get them charged with harassment and/or intimidation or at the least having an ADVO (a type of Police created restraining order) placed on them.

My advice to Mr Callum [if he reads this] would be to forward any and all further correspondence (in any way) to a solicitor (Check law Society in your State), keep a camera handy for if the 'investigators' show up again, call the police if they confront you, and say nothing anymore other than through your solicitor.

You also might want to make a complaint to the Legal Society in your state about the unprofessional nature of the correspondence (especially the 24hr notice in first letter) and intimidatory investigators.

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Oh and Marcus, before you go off with your "but I said that", please note:

I am making these comments with the understanding that you wrote those words, but also with the understanding that you just don't seem to believe them, grok them, or really care about them. It's a big long post to say "It's a big company", and then still to try to find a way to vilify them - and to take a shot at a **AA company.

Yang has referred the exchange to the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner and is seeking redress from Baker & McKenzie (read his email to the firm’s senior partners and the OLSC here).

Jasmine Clubb, a senior associate at Baker & McKenzie said she “can’t make any comment on that” and referred Crikey to the firm’s media relations area. Robert Arnold did not return calls but Annelise Cleary, a Baker & McKenzie corporate affairs manager, emailed later to tell Crikey that it’s “not appropriate to comment”. She did not respond to a follow-up email asking why the firm had come to that view.

Hasbro’s Gibson hung up on Crikey when we called her for comment, saying that “I’m not allowed to comment…I’m going to have to go” when asked whether the she had used the Pinpoint Sight offer to trick Yang into disclosing his address.

Meanwhile, Yang’s fondness for Hasbro products has dimmed. “I was very, very disappointed with Hasbro … People are often surprised that my blog is all done for free and for the geeky love of Nerf and I had genuinely believed that I was not doing anything wrong by Hasbro given that my endorsements are for genuine products etc,” he told Crikey. “As a consumer and long-time fan, I felt that the far from up-front emails from Hasbro and their lawyers were very poor behaviour from such a large and sophisticated organisation.”

A boycott Hasbro campaign has now been set up on Facebook, attracting the opprobrium of Aloysius T. Dudefella, who wrote that he would now be avoiding Nerf guns forever.

Though the following Meme that is floating around says it all I think :)

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So when just one division of BP screwed up (along with Haliburton, etc), did people say "That's ok, that's the drilling division, not their petrol (gas) selling division"? No, they boycotted anything BP en masse. Even though most of the petrol (gas) stations boycotted were not only innocent, but only third-party franchisers who had made the 'mistake' of picking BP (as opposed to Esso...).

And yes, we all know how much you would love to 'slam' Marcus, and how easy you would find the idea ;)

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Yeah, good point. Frankly I don't see why everyone was so mad at BP anyway. I mean, they are a BIG company, right? And big companies can't be expected to do things right, and shouldn't really be held accountable when they do something stupid, or so I'm being told here anyway.

So, when the oil spilled, people were being pretty "self-serving" by criticizing BP - they just weren't living in the "real world" where, hey, it's not like you can follow every safety procedure right? So let's let those poor guys at BP off the hook and stop trying to "vilify" them when they're only crime was being a big company.

For those of you that want to stop watching MLP:FIM because of this

I m not sure if we can blame any of the developers from about this, Hasbro makes more than just My little pony. I doubt that the developers are among the ones that take care of the copyright stuff/lawyer stuff.